JAHA KOO - Cuckoo

Photo: Eunkyung Jeong

A journey through the last 20 years of Korean history told by a bunch of talkative rice cookers.

One day when his electric rice cooker informed him that his meal was ready, Jaha Koo experienced a deep sense of isolation. ‘Golibmuwon’ (고립무원) is an untranslatable Korean word expressing the feeling of helpless isolation that characterizes the lives of many young people in Korea today.

Twenty years ago there was a major economic crisis in South-Korea, comparable to the financial crash in the United States and Southern Europe in 2008. This crisis had a huge impact on the young generation to which South Korean artist Jaha Koo belongs. He witnessed many endemic problems including youth unemployment and socio-economic inequality. Rising suicide rates, isolation, acute social withdrawal and a fixation on personal appearance are but a few of the symptoms.

In bittersweet and humorous dialogues, Jaha and his clever rice cookers take you on a journey through the last 20 years of Korean history, combining personal experience with political events and reflections on happiness, economic crises and death.

Premiere: Steirischer Herbst, Graz (AT), 2017
Duration: 55 min
Trigger warning: This performance contains explicit content, images related to suicide and loud music.

Title in Korean: 쿠쿠

The Hamartia Trilogy

Since 2014, Jaha Koo has been developing The Hamartia Trilogy, a series that explores how an irrevocable past continues to shape the present and the future. Cuckoo is the second part of the trilogy, following Lolling and Rolling and preceding The History of Korean Western Theatre.

The term hamartia, borrowed from Aristotle’s Poetics, refers to a decisive tragic error. Through this concept, Jaha Koo connects personal experience with historical events, tracing the structural impact of imperialism on individual lives.